Inside the New York Yankees clubhouse with MLB.com beat writer Bryan Hoch.

Yankees sweep away the A’s

Aided by Jason Giambi’s go-ahead homer in the sixth, Andy Pettitte guided a
two-hour, 26-minute breezer in New York’s 2-1 win against Oakland on
Sunday to complete a three-game sweep at Yankee Stadium. It was another sweltering day up in the Bronx but Pettitte kept his cool, working quickly and efficiently.

Johnny Damon wants to be in the Yankees lineup. Well, you can’t always get what you want. There’s a chance he’ll be in Monday as the Yankees meet the Twins.

I’ve been checking the coolstandings.com site pretty much daily now; it’s become part of my morning habit. I was no math major, but this is the time of year for it. In case you’re wondering, the Yankees are handicapped at 25.1 percent to make the playoffs, 12.4 percent for the AL East title.

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.500 certainly is doable considering that we’ve edged out even Mighty Boston in the season series for the last several years I believe… maybe last year we tied? I don’t believe we’ve lost one to them recently though.

TB is just a better team… but we’ve managed to edge ’em out in the season series this year to-date, so yeah it’s very doable.

With the West being so weak, we should be able to pass-by Oakland (we did), leaving the Central as our watchspot on the Wildcard. Beating the Twinkies helps that prospect and the White Sox too when we get over to their place. As a matter of fact, if we beat them today, we are tied for the WC after one and a half whole series coming out of the break, and not having played a single of those 15 against our Rivals… not shabby at all despite all the injuries to the Yanks’ better players.

Easy peasy math says, if we go .500 against TB, and go .500 against Boston, in theory, we lead the division! (3+4/5 = 7/8)

Now that’s doable even with average expectations. What say we take 4 of 6 from TB? Or, 6 of 9 from Boston? Stranger things have happened…. The Boston Massacre comes to mind… how soon they forget… heheheh

Sure you can also factor things like strength of schedule, but that really isn’t necessary at this point, but could be used as an overall factor to look at and be valid.

But really that’s not necessary because we’re talking about the division first, wildcard second. Since we have 12 games each with Boston and Tampa bay, that’s plenty of games to take over the lead; no other factors needed!

But that would give us a better looking % and by-gawd ESPN or FOX just can’t have that now can they!?

Sure the numbers will change, but the further you go into the season the smaller your margin will be, hence the smaller your % to win.

4.5 is nothing, that can be made up in the season series alone… that HAS to be factored, because head-to-head accounts for direct movement in the standings each way. :P

So, how many games to we have left with Boston and/or Tampa? That should be the only quantification needed until the games behind # is greater than the games remaining with the leader of the division, since right now that can and may fluctuate with Tampa and Boston, you have to make to separate computations. ;)

That’s why half of the stats you see people throw out are not credible, they don’t show you their work! :P

Probably because Boston has to keep losing with the addition of Ortiz back into the lineup and the Rays will have to keep losing with Longoria playing the way he’s been playing. Think about it, on equal footing each tam has roughly a 33% chance of making it we’re chasing 3.5 to get into the playoffs with Boston getting better and the Rays playing well and infront of us, we have to be handicapped less than a 33% favorite to make the playoffs and even less to make it into 1st. Either way they’re just numbers what we have to do is keep winning and then hope the other teams keep helping us out, Boston has given us a gift by not putting us away by now and we have to capitalize, especially because Ortiz is coming back. The Yanks aren’t in a horrible position but they’re not in good position either, this team is put together to win, even with some of the losses we’ve had we’re still a better on paper team than the Rays and I’d even say Boston but players like Cano, Jeter, Abreu, Melky have underachieved and need to pick it up. Cano has the last half dozen games but Jeter is a .300 hitter too and he’s batting far below his lifetime average and has no pop in his bat this year whatsoever, Melky has been getting better as well. Abreu is supposed to be an OBP guy and he’s 7th on the team and is second only to Sexon in strikeouts mainly because he takes strike one and two before he decides to swing. The teams offense is mediocre but they’re in the hunt and need to take advantage soon, and I believe they will the aforementioned players are top notch players and I believe they’ll right the ship in time for October baseball in the Bronx.

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